A blog by Z_AC_Tech. Proud to be an exceptional American TEAhadist Conservative Infidel. Embrace the Conservative core values of low taxes, smaller government, freedom to practice religion or not if you desire, right to bear arms, a strong military and the right to an alternative education verses the failed public education. The Liberal answer let’s throw more money and regulations at the problem. Big government, big labor and big business is oppressing the common man. Reagan Akbar!

Monday, December 27, 2010

The Tragedy Of The Commons

The Tragedy Of The Commonsquotes from ZACTech, Daniel McFadden and Tibor Machan

Immigrants to New England in the 17th century formed villages in which they had privately owned homesteads and gardens, but they also set aside community-owned pastures, called commons, where all of the villagers' livestock could graze. Settlers had an incentive to avoid overuse of their private lands, so they would remain productive in the future. However, this self-interested stewardship of private lands did not extend to the commons. As a result, the commons were overgrazed and degenerated to the point that they were no longer able to support the villagers' cattle. This failure of private incentives to provide adequate maintenance of public resources is known to economists as "the tragedy of the commons."

Contemporary society has a number of current examples of the tragedy of the commons: the depletion of fish stocks in international waters, congestion on urban highways, and the rise of resistant diseases due to careless use of antibiotics. However, the commons that is likely to have the greatest impact on our lives in the new century is the digital commons, the information available on the Internet through the portals that provide access. The problem with digital information is the mirror image of the original grazing commons: Information is costly to generate and organize, but its value to individual consumers is too dispersed and small to establish an effective market. The information that is provided is inadequately catalogued and organized. Furthermore, the Internet tends to fill with low-value information: The products that have high commercial value are marketed through revenue-producing channels, and the Internet becomes inundated with products that cannot command these values. Self-published books and music are cases in point

Is this stuff with Greece and, soon, with Portugal, Spain and Italy, and the rest of us all that surprising? Has it not been clear for ages that when people draw their support from a common pool, the resources will soon vanish?
Aristotle already noted this phenomenon when he said, “For that which is common to the greatest number has the least care bestowed upon it. Every one thinks chiefly of his own, hardly at all of the common interest; and only when he is himself concerned as an individual. For besides other considerations, everybody is more inclined to neglect the duty which he expects another to fulfill; as in families many attendants are often less useful than a few.” (Politics, 1262a30-37) Biologist Garrett Hardin reaffirmed the point in an influential essay, “The Tragedy of the Commons,” for the magazine Science, on December 13, 1968.
The gist of the tragedy is that commonly held (important) resources will be depleted and will not be replenished. And this doesn’t apply only to how the wilds are being ruined by being held in common but also to national treasuries which everyone in a country believes is there for him or her to dip into indiscriminately. And then, with international communities, the tragedy isn’t contained by national borders.
One of the largest commons these days is the European Union. Everyone in Europe is fighting to take from its common pool of stuff — mostly funds through such outfits as the IMF, the World Bank, etc. — but few are eager to replace what they have taken. And this applies to the citizenry, clearly, not only the politicians who want to please them. (The IMF draws a lot of its funds now from the USA! How long can that go on?)
And the same is happening in the USA, of course, what with common pools such as the so called Social Security fund slowly being drained. What are all those lobbyists doing in Washington? Looking to dip into the common treasury as deeply as they can. Getting stuff from the government is always enthusiastically pursued while refilling its coffers is not—who really volunteers to pay taxes, let alone more than one must fork over? That is just what the tragedy of the commons amounts to, get as much out as you can, and put as little back as possible.
The best way to deal with the tragedy of the commons is privatization! But of course that would help put an end to this constant promise of a free ride. Moreover, once people get used to getting a free ride, at least for a while, they regard it as a God-given right for them to continue. And there you have Greece today and the rest of the welfare states of the globe tomorrow. (Actually, most of them are merely postponing their comeuppance.)
Privatization — making the stuff of the world private property instead of held in common — solves the problem because it imposes discipline. Everyone must cope with the limited stuff he or she has, can produce, can obtain through peaceful trade, nothing more. No one may dump his or her waste on the neighbor! No one may rip off the neighbor once out of private resources. Maybe in a few drastic emergencies such transgressions will be tolerated but not as a rule, which is how it goes now. Such discipline as privatization brings about would also handle most environmental problems. Even a fiasco such as the oil mess in the Gulf of Mexico would be more likely to be contained if the oceans itself were privately owned — without very serious assurance of safety, drilling would not be possible because private parties would be vigilant about protecting their rightful interests!
On numerous fronts, then, we see that the problems that keep showing up in the daily news are the result of reliance upon the commons. Hardin himself thought that a strict administration of the commons might solve the problem but he didn’t take public choice theory into consideration — people “in charge” have their own agendas and will not really guard the ever elusive public interest.
One way to deal with all this is to come up with a sound constitution for a country! Constitutional economists, like James Buchanan, have been advocating this for years but the public and the political class knows that it would mean the end of their free ride. Never mind that such a free ride will end anyway. But folks do think they can continue eating their cake and having it, too. Not a promising picture!
True Conservatism needs to prevail not Progressivism by either the Democrats or Republicans. Limited Government = True Freedom and Large Government by either party = Oppression!